Owlpen Manor
The garden at Owlpen is an unusually complete survival of an early formal garden on a manorial scale. It has been described by the landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe as possibly the earliest domestic garden in England to survive in something approaching completeness. And, however that may be, certainly many visitors find the medieval atmosphere, and sense of romance and mystery, are overwhelming, with yew rooms, hanging terraces linked by gravel paths and uncomfortably steep steps, and always the hill impending steeply at its back.
The garden — properly less than half an acre and with few flowers — has been visited, admired and written about by some of the twentieth century’s most inspired gardeners, including Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Jellicoe himself.
